A'ali: Memories of Eden

A'ali

The Middle East

      In the heart of the region that we call the Middle East lies the Persian Gulf.

The Persian Gulf in the Middle East

     Within the Persian Gulf, on the western shore, tucked between the peninsula of Qatar and the shoreline of Saudi Arabia.....

The island of Bahrain in the Persian Gulf in the Middle East

 ...lies the little island kingdom of Bahrain.

A closer view of the island of Bahrain in the Persian Gulf in the Middle East

      The kingdom of Bahrain is one of the first of the Arab oil producing nations.  It is, as it has been throughout historical times, also an excellent natural port.  It currently also dabbles in banking and tourism, but is known for little else beside a harshly repressive constitutional monarchy.

     This was not always so. 

     Interestingly, archaeology and legend complement each other here.  Bahrain has been known since ancient times as "the island of the dead."  The northern part of the island, around the town of A'ali, is covered with over 170,000 burial mounds. 

     This estimate is changing as more mounds are found and, confusingly, more are destroyed by the building plans of the current government.  In the words of their kind and sensitive officials, "They're not Muslim graves, so why should we care?"

Aerial view of the northern plain, near the town of A'ali, on the Island of Bahrain in the Persian Gulf in the Middle East.  All of those dots that you see are burial mounds.

Mounds like this.....

 

...and this...

....and this.

      Sumerian records identify this island with the kingdom known as Dilmun, "country of the rising sun, center of earthly paradise and the only region to survive the Flood (sic)." Archaeology has found evidence (buildings, pottery, statues) of this kingdom.  On nearby islands and on the Arabian coast are many evidences of the same civilization, some even older than the ones on Bahrain.
     The kingdom of Dilmun was apparently trading with both the Indus River Valley civilization (Mohenjo-Daro, Harrapa, Kot Diji, Mehrgahr and Lothal, in modern day Pakistan, which we have discussed in my first blog entry) and the Mesopotamian culture (Sumerians, who lived in the region that we now call Iraq).  This makes them co-existent with the oldest civilizations known to us and no doubt conversant in all the science, knowledge and culture that these people had.

     That makes what is in the burial mounds more intriguing.  When the mounds were opened, beside the skeletal remains, there were the usual grave goods that people have included since time immemorial - pots and vessels that held food and drink, jewelry and other personal items.

     In large numbers of the graves, though, carefully arranged and preserved, are the skeletons of large venomous snakes.  Why would you put a venomous snake in the grave of someone that you were trying to help through the afterlife, someone that you loved and respected?

    

CEM Museum in Glen Rose, Texas, USA.

Dr. Carl Baugh, director of CEM, standing beside the small hyperbaric chamber, holding a small ecosystem, which includes....

     A clue may be found in the small Creation Evidence Museum in Glen Rose, TX, USA.  There, Dr. Carl Baugh has been attempting to reproduce environmental conditions that his theoretical models say existed in a pre-Flood environment.

     We have discussed these conditions in my first blog, but let me summarize here.  His research, and the research of other scientists, many of whom are devout materialistic uniformitarians, indicate that, in the Pre-Flood environment,  the atmospheric pressure was twice what it is today, that the oxygen level was at 30% instead of today's 14% and that the magnetic field of the earth was very much stronger than it is today. 

     (I recommend checking out their website.  It's very professional and informative.  http://www.creationevidence.org/)

....a living Copperhead snake.

     To reproduce this pre-Flood environment, a hyperbaric chamber was filled with plants and animals, including a copperhead snake.  Then the chamber was pressurized to two atmospheres and the oxygen level was raised to 30%.  Magnetic coils were also wrapped around the chamber to intensify the magnetic field to a level approximating the magnetic field of the Pre-Flood world.  One of the areas of inquiry was to determine the effect, if any, this environment had on various functions of the snake, including the production of venom.

     When samples of the venom were taken and examined, even microscopic examination clearly showed that the venom had been dramatically altered.  The protein crystals in an unaltered snake's venom, when seen under a microscope, are haphazard, like a pile of jackstraws that have been thrown in a pile.  The venom of the snake in the hyperbaric chamber had crystals that were rigidly organized, like bricks, layer upon layer.

     Medical experts that were shown this venom were very excited about the medicinal possibilities and research is on-going.  The medical field already uses snake venom for a variety of useful medications and therapies, even though it is a poison. 

     The Bible, in Genesis, tells us that Adam and Eve were not afraid of a snake in a pre-Flood environment.  The Biblical book of Isaiah, chapter 11, verse 8, talks about what the earth will be like when God reconstructs it as He originally meant for it to be.  Part of that description says, "The nursing child will play by the hole of the cobra, and the weaned child will put his hand on the viper’s den."  Again, in the pre-Flood environment, snakes were nothing to be feared.

      The people of the Dilmun kingdom probably lived within a few years of the Flood.  We know from the Biblical record that it took some time for the gradually weakening atmosphere and magnetic field to change things.  We see this in the Biblical genealogies.  They show that the lifespans of people before the Flood (which nearly reached 1,000 years routinely), became shorter and shorter as the atmosphere became poorer in oxygen and the magnetic field grew weaker.

    In the time of Dilmun, perhaps those effects had only begun.  Perhaps, in that time, serpents were seen as helpful, perhaps even medicinal creatures.  Perhaps they were something that you would give to a loved one to supply them with medicine, as we would give someone on a journey a first-aid kit.

     I think that the evidence seems to point that way.  What do you think?

WARNING!!

This blog has been written with the sole purpose of using the ample evidence available to verify and support the biblical record, while refuting the copious propaganda that is shoved down our throats daily by materialistic uniformitarians.

It is my contention that the Bible describes God's original creation of people with extraordinary capabilities who subsequently built an advanced civilization that exceeds our own. That civilization was destroyed in the Great Flood and we have spent the last 5,000 years trying to re-build that civilization and to re-gain those capabilities. I contend that science supports all this in multiple disciplines, but this information is ignored or suppressed by various people who have an opposing agenda.

Nothing that you see on this blog is original. Any fact that you see here is obtainable on a dozen different websites and books. I use these facts and photos, without violating their copyrights, under the legal principle of fair use practice. That is, I use them one time, for educational purposes only.
 

The point is, nothing here is made up. The only thing that I do (or need to do) is assemble this information in a discernible pattern.
 

You might want to read through the first entry posted on this blog (Past Remembering: Thoughts toward a coherent view of our ancient past, our present and our future) in order to understand my theoretical and theological underpinnings more clearly.

     The truth is there. You just have to see it.  

Ecclesiastes 1:9-10 (NASB)

That which has been is that which will be,

And that which has been done is that which will be done.

So there is nothing new under the sun.

Is there anything of which one might say,

“See this, it is new”?

Already it has existed for ages

Which were before us.

Tiwanaku - Echoes of before

Western coast of South America

     In the South American country of Bolivia, at an elevation of 12,600 feet above sea level is the combined archaeological site of Tiwanaku (possibly derived from the local Aymara Indian word for “The Stone of the Center”)and the nearby site of Puma Punku (“Gate of the Mountain Lion”). Both lie about three miles (depending on the level of the water) from the highest navigable body of water in the world, Lake Titicaca.

The ruins here are ancient. When the Spanish arrived in the 1500’s, the sites had all suffered from centuries of erosion, pilfering and vandalism from various groups. Anything that could be ready moved and could be used for buildings, etc., was long ago carried away.

     The resulting jumble is difficult, at best, to interpret. The Bolivian authorities have tried to partially re-assemble many of the stone structures, but their interpretation is, with all due respect, questionable. If nothing else, so much has been removed that they don't even know what they are missing.
 
     The carvings that have been left are all arcane, highly-stylized figures that are eroded and difficult to decipher. There has been no evidence of writing discovered, so we have no real eyewitness record of who lived here, other than the irrefutable evidence of the structures left behind.

Those structures are fascinating enough!   Once again, we have monolithic stones up to 26 feet tall, weighing up to 100 tons, fit together with unbelievable precision, performed over and over again, with mass produced exactitude. 

Especially at Puma Punku, we find stones built to interconnect like Lego blocks and formed in ways that we CANNOT duplicate today, without a huge allocation of time and effort, with technology such as computers and lasers. We’ve discussed that enough in previous blog entries, so let’s go on, but I want to note one fact. It takes only a quick glance to realize that these hundreds of mega-ton, interlocked stones have been scattered across the plain in the same way that a child would scatter dominoes – or maybe a large influx of water would do this?

The theory exists that some form of explosion, like the impact of a meteor, caused this scattering.  This is unsupported by any signs of burning or cratering.

These huge megaliths have been shattered, ground together, scattered abroad and buried in mud.  Scientists think that a wall of mud 8 to 10 feet tall inundated Puma Punku.

Statue called "The Prior" at Tiwanaku.

There has also been found evidence of extensive use of the "flooded-raised field" agriculture (suka kollus) that we have discussed earlier. Also impressive and evidence that a large population was supported here at one time, in a place that is currently barren altiplano, but let’s go on.

Examples of the megaliths at Puma Punku

As you move toward the Lake (which, remember, is about three miles away), a large wharf area, just under the surface of the lake, a wharf or dock was found.  The crescent shaped stonework structure has very large and deep docks and piers stretching out from it, like the teeth on a comb. Ships that traveled a lake wouldn’t need such large and deep berths. Only ocean-going ships would use such berths - ships with deep keels. 

An example of the precision stone work at Puma Punku.  This line couldn't have been cut any straighter, or more uniformly with a laser

While we’re speaking of the ocean and Lake Titicaca, it is noteworthy that there are species of sea horses living in the Lake. Sea horses are, like their name says, salt water creatures. What are they doing in a fresh water lake?

Exploration of the bottom of Lake Titicaca has been very slow for two reasons. First, technically, it is very difficult and quite dangerous to scuba dive in such cold water at such high altitudes.  Remember, this is over 2.5 miles above sea level.  Only recently have a very few researchers had the skill, the courage and the technology to begin exploration.

Secondly, the materialistic uniformitarian academics have completely disregarded the local fishermen’s numerous and emphatically held testimonies about the walls and buildings that they could see underwater when drought lowered the water levels.

No great surprise, then, that even these tentative dives have found well-built walls and buildings. The carvings and statues found are identical to the ones in the nearby Tiwanaku complex.

A member of the Aymara Indian tribe

It is interesting, although not necessarily true, that the local Aymara Indians say that the ruins of Tiwanaku and Puma Punku were built long ago, by a “god” (Veracocha, who is described as being tall, bearded, fair-haired and light skinned– totally unlike the local natives). In order to build the buildings, giants were created and put to work on the city.  When the giants displeased the “god,” they were destroyed by a flood. Hmmm.

Another Aymara man, as is the one below

It may be worthy of note here that the ruins at Tiwanaku, though not at Puma Punku, still feature many carvings of faces, both in the walls and on some of the remaining free-standing statues.  Many people say that the faces depicted on these images are representative of all the types of people known in the world.  They are certainly widely varied in detail, but the interpretation of their racial characteristic may be open for discussion.  The variation in the faces alone is interesting. 

 The local peoples, the Aymara and Quechua Indians, show little variation in their features, as is true with most isolated peoples.  You can see this clearly from the photos.

 What is more clear is the evidence of one statue in particular.  This particular statue distinctly shows a man with bushy eyebrows, thick lips and a full beard.  This is drastically different from the local peoples, who have very thin lips, and, (like almost all Native American peoples) very little if any facial hair below the eyebrows.   The sculptor had obviously seen an individual who did not belong to any of the extant native people groups anywhere for thousands of miles.



The Fuente Magna bowl

In the 1950's a local farmer found what is called the Fuente Magna bowl buried nearby.  It is about two feet across.  It is heavily inscribed with the earliest forms of Sumerian cuneiform writing.  The Sumerians lived 8,000 miles away in Mesopotamia (the place that we call Iraq) and they existed around 3,000 B. C.



This is early Sumerian cuneiform script on the inner rim of the Fuente Magna bowl. 

Compare the writing on the Fuente Magna bowl to this example of ancient Sumerian cuneiform writing found in modern Iraq and dated at 3,000 B. C.

Finally, on the mountain sides surrounding the plains area are layers of deposits that are obviously traces of the minerals from a salt sea, filled with fossils of marine life. Most interesting of all is the fact that this layer is diagonal to the current level line – it is tilted. Water doesn’t tilt, not long enough to leave heavy marks on rocks.

So, what do all these facts tell us?

1. There was a complex civilization living in this area, with capabilities beyond our current western civilization - in stone working, in construction and in agriculture.

2. Even though the area is currently over two miles in elevation, it was once at, or below, sea level.

3. Not only the altitude, but the level of the terrain has been radically, dramatically, changed.

4.  The people currently living in this area do not appear to be the same people who built the stone structures at Tiawanaku and Puma Punku. The builders also appear to have had contact with other civilizations as far away as the Middle East.

For those of you who may not remember from the previous blog entries, I favor the theories of Dr. Walter Brown (http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/index.html), who holds that the continental plates were moved violently apart at great speed when the underlying layer of saline water was released in the area of the Atlantic Ocean floor that we now call the Atlantic Rift.

As the continent (in this case, South America) was pushed away, westward, gliding on the remaining saline layer, the western edge ran off its lubricating layer first, causing that edge to scrape and crash into the underlying stone layers, making it bunch up and wrinkle on that edge. This resulted in mountains like the Andes and the Rockies.

All of this evidence has been preserved in the oxygen poor, arid highlands of Peru for us. If we listen carefully, we can hear echoes of those who came before us.

WARNING!!


      The truth is there. You just have to see it.

This blog has been written with the sole purpose of using the ample evidence available to verify and support the biblical record, while refuting the copious propaganda that is shoved down our throats daily by materialistic uniformitarians.

     It is my contention that the Bible describes God's original creation of people with extraordinary capabilities who subsequently built an advanced civilization that exceeds our own. That civilization was destroyed in the Great Flood and we have spent the last 5,000 years trying to re-build that civilization and re-gain those capabilities. I contend that science supports all this in multiple disciplines, but this information is ignored or suppressed by various people who have an opposing agenda.

Nothing that you see on this blog is original. Any fact that you see here is obtainable on a dozen different websites and books. I use these facts and photos, without violating their copyrights, under the legal principle of fair use practice. That is, I use them one time, for educational purposes only.

     The point is, nothing here is made up. The only thing that I do (or need to do) is assemble this information in a discernible pattern. 

You might want to read through the first entry posted on this blog (http://betterthanufos.blogspot.com/2011/02/v-behaviorurldefaultvml-o.html) in order to understand my theoretical and theological underpinnings more clearly.

Ecclesiastes 1:9-10 (NASB)

That which has been is that which will be,

And that which has been done is that which will be done.

So there is nothing new under the sun.

Is there anything of which one might say,

“See this, it is new”?

Already it has existed for ages

Which were before us.

Easter Island walking

        Easter Island may be one of the most remote spots in the world.  It's nearest neighbor, Pitcairn Island, is 1,289 miles to the west.  Easter Island is claimed and ruled by Chile, which is 2,180 miles to the east.

 
      Easter Island was originally populated by a tall Polynesian people who are called the Rapanui, (although this is a borrowed Tahitian name), and they call their island, "Te Pito o TeHenua" or "The End of the Land."

     The original settlers, the Rapanui, may have never numbered more than 5,000 or so.  When they were discovered by Spanish explorers in the 1700's, their population had already been decimated by civil war, cannibalism and ecological disruption.  For example, the first Europeans found absolutely no trees on the island, although research shows that palm trees and other trees were abundant previously.  

     To this the Spanish conquistadores added their own  blessings of disease, military invasion and slave raids.  In the end, there were only 36 individuals left of the original population.

     Because of this genocide (combined with what you might call 'group suicide'), almost all of the individuals who knew anything about the past or culture of Easter Island were killed or died in slavery.  Consequently, we have hardly any knowledge of anything the Rapanui could tell us about themselves or their past.

     The immediately identifiable icon of this mysterious place is the image of the strange stone figures, called by the natives "moai."  The moai are carved of the volcanic rock of which the whole island consists.  There are about 877 of these moai scattered in various places about the island.  The ones that have been erected are up to 33 feet tall (5 or 6 times taller than you) and weigh up to 86 tons (remember, a ton is about the weight of a standard passenger sedan). There are moai still in the quarries that are almost twice that size.

     A great deal of research and experimentation with all manner of ropes, pulleys, winches, sleds and rollers has been done to try to determine exactly how the ancient Rapanui transported  the moai from their quarry sites to their

destinations all over the island and then set them upright.  As with the experiments to explain how the Great Pyramids and Stonehenge were built, all have failed.

     Many of the moai are placed on large flat stone platforms, called by the natives "ahu."  The ahu are themselves constructed of very large stones.  This would be an additional 6 to 10 feet that the Rapanui would have to raised the 80 ton moai to set them in place.

     When various travelers, explorers, anthropologists and archaeologists have asked the surviving Rapanui how their ancestors moved the moai and set them on their ahu's (because, remember, we're all civilized and technologically sophisticated and far superior to the primitive Rapanui and we can't figure out how they did it), the answer is invariably the same.

      "The moai walked to their ahu's."

      A relevant thing to note is that most of the statues that we see show only the head.  Yet all of these statues also have arms and torsos.  You are only seeing a third of the total statue, as depicted in some of the photos above.  

     While archaeologists tell us that the Rapanui arrived on Easter Island no earlier than the 300's A. D., and that they are the ones that carved these statues, it would take thousands of years for the moai to sink 20 to 30 feet into the soil below them.  Yet that is exactly how deep they are, again depicted in the photos above.

 
    So.....what?  Did the Rapanui go to all this labor to carve these gigantic figures and move them, then proceeded to routinely bury 2/3 of each statue, up to their necks?

    As usual, things aren't adding up with the stories the uniformitarian archaeologists are feeding us.




        Another of the mysteries of Easter Island are the rongorongo, or "talking boards."  Europeans noticed that the Rapanui, who lacked firewood, (remember, ALL of the trees were gone from the island) were burning certain very old boards that they called rongorongo.  The Europeans noted that the boards were covered with a very densely packed, complex hieroglyphic form of script.

     Since all of the people who knew anything about this script were dead (chiefs, priests, elders), the surviving Rapanui had no idea what the rongorongo represented and they surely could not read them.  About 24 have been collected.  None of them are on Easter Island any more and all are densely covered with over 14,000 different and very complex glyphs.  There are no rongorongo Rosetta stones, nor are there ever likely to be, so the chances of ever decyphering them are slim, short of building a time machine and going back to find someone who can read them.

    It is also relevent to note that, in one of the few stories that the Rapanui retain, they tell how their ancestors came to Easter Island from a far-away continent.  The story says that the people there were numerous and technologically advanced.

     Here then, are the questions raised: 
     1.  How could a supposedly primitive people - never numbering more than 5,000 or so - cut, transport, elevate and set up massive stones that even our most powerful modern cranes would have difficulty in dealing with?
      2.  Why would a small, isolated group of people develop an extremely complex written form of communication, when none of the closest neighboring peoples (the other Polynesian cultures on the west, nor the Inca on the South American coast to the east) had even begun to do so.

     When I was a probation officer and somebody told me a story that didn't make sense, I knew that somebody was either lying or withholding some critical information. From that point, the hunt for the truth was on.
      When it comes to what has happened in ancient times (not just on Easter Island, but all over the world), many of the stories don't make sense. 
     Let the hunt begin!

WARNING!!

This blog has been written with the sole purpose of using the ample evidence available to verify and support the biblical record, while refuting the copious propaganda that is shoved down our throats daily by materialistic uniformitarians.

It is my contention that the Bible describes God's original creation of people with extraordinary capabilities who subsequently built an advanced civilization that exceeds our own. That civilization was destroyed in the Great Flood and we have spent the last 5,000 years trying to re-build that civilization. I contend that science supports all this in multiple disciplines, but this information is ignored or suppressed by various people who have an opposing agenda.

Nothing that you see on this blog is original. Any fact that you see here is obtainable on a dozen different websites and books. I use these facts and photos, without violating their copyrights, under the legal principle of fair use practice. That is, I use them one time, for educational purposes only.

The point is, nothing here is made up. The only thing that I do (or need to do) is assemble this information in a discernible pattern.

You might want to read through the first entry posted on this blog (Past Remembering: Thoughts toward a coherent view of our ancient past, our present and our future) in order to understand my theoretical and theological underpinnings more clearly.

The truth is there. You just have to see it.


Ecclesiastes 1:9-10 (NASB)

"That which has been is that which will be,
And that which has been done is that which will be done.

So there is nothing new under the sun.

Is there anything of which one might say,

“See this, it is new”?

Already it has existed for ages

Which were before us."

The Dolmens: Giants' Toys

"Dolmen" is a word that is used to describe certain megalithic (made out of giant stones) structures that exist world-wide, which no one has any really good explanation for.

A dolmen can, in it's simplest form be described as three large rocks, formed like the Greek letter Pi.  That is, there are two vertical stones on the side, forming two walls, with another single stone laid across the top, forming a roof.  These structures are also called such things as portal barrows, portal tombs, tunnel graves, or quoit.  

While they are all constructed of large stones, some are larger than others.  The one in the image from Brittany, France, is about the size and weight of a house.

The darwinist propaganda says that these are all ancient tombs, which were constructed when hundreds of prehistoric people banding together to raise these stones and then, after putting large amounts of dirt around the sides of the barrow, dragging the capstone on top, using the surrounding mounds of dirt as a ramp.  Erosion then washed away the soil, leaving the interior rocks standing free.

No great surprise that there are problems with that.  While there are often ancient grave sites in or around the dolmens, there is no real evidence that the people in the graves built the dolmen.  People will often bury their dead near a significant monument or other well-known feature, using it as a sort of memorial, converted to honoring their own people.

In almost every instance, the local people, some of whom have lived around the dolmens for thousands of years, will disavow any responsibility for building the dolmen.  There are usually stories of giants, trolls or magical beings building them.  In some cases they are mystical portals to another place.  Yet in their collective memory, these things have always been there.

It doesn't explain how these things have remained standing through earthquakes, fires and flood for all these thousands of years, precarious as they sometimes seem.  It also doesn't explain why, as we have discussed before, these ancient people used gigantic rocks to produce something that could have more easily been done with smaller stones.

Unless it was easy - for them.

WARNING!!

This blog has been written with the sole purpose of using the ample evidence available to verify and support the biblical record, while refuting the copious propaganda that is shoved down our throats daily by materialistic uniformitarians.

It is my contention that the Bible describes God's original creation of people with extraordinary capabilities who subsequently built an advanced civilization that exceeds our own. That civilization was destroyed in the Great Flood and we have spent the last 5,000 years trying to re-build that civilization. I contend that science supports all this in multiple disciplines, but this information is ignored or suppressed by various people who have an opposing agenda.

Nothing that you see on this blog is original. Any fact that you see here is obtainable on a dozen different websites and books. I use these facts and photos, without violating their copyrights, under the legal principle of fair use practice. That is, I use them one time, for educational purposes only.

The point is, nothing here is made up. The only thing that I do (or need to do) is assemble this information in a discernible pattern.

You might want to read through the first entry posted on this blog (Past Remembering: Thoughts toward a coherent view of our ancient past, our present and our future) in order to understand my theoretical and theological underpinnings more clearly.

The truth is there. You just have to see it.

 
Ecclesiastes 1:9-10 (New American Standard Bible)

That which has been is that which will be,
And that which has been done is that which will be done.
So there is nothing new under the sun.

Is there anything of which one might say,

“See this, it is new”?

Already it has existed for ages

Which were before us.